Author's Note: This is not the original Electric Eldritch Eidolon. That story was deleted by the administrators without warning. (When did using song lyrics become a capital offense? Song fics used to be a staple of the Fanfiction diet) Anyway, I'm reuploading the story, just without the offending chapters. If you want to read those, check out my profile on Archive Of Our Own.
July 7, 11:09 P.M.
Canal District, The Docks.
Nicholas Wilde found himself staring down, well, up the barrel of a very large gun. So big, in fact, it could only be wielded safely by a large mammal, such as the brown bear decked out in black combat fatigues currently staring down at him. Probably staring at him. It was hard to tell through the black aviator sunglasses.
The fox had his paws up, eyes wide, ears pinned back, and teeth carefully tucked away in an attempt to look as nonthreatening as possible. He'd never actually seen a gun up close before, but knew they were very, very dangerous. The bear didn't look like a pushover, either.
To Nick's right was a lioness in a fine suit. In her right paw was a plain black briefcase, her left paw held casually behind her back. Her entire body was held casually, except her eyes. They were sharp and steady, focused intensely on the black-clad soldiers arrayed out in front of her.
There were five of them. Two wolves, a boar, an antelope, and, of course, the bear currently staring down the fox. One of the wolves stepped forward. His fur, black as pitch, made his intense yellow eyes glow.
"One chance." His voice was deep and frightening. At least, Nick thought so. The lioness didn't seem impressed. "Give us what we want, or die."
"Fuck off, Gmork." The feline's succinct reply made Nick feel sick. The silence that followed was so charged that the red fox could have sworn he heard crackling. Finally, Gmork spoke.
"Fine." He glanced at the bear. "Off the witness."
"Wait a sec-!" Nick's desperate plea was cut short by a shotgun blast. The fox was slammed into the ground, a hole blown through his chest. As the world dimmed and blurred and faded, the fox faintly heard shouting and gunfire.
Guess that's it…
As he stared up at the smoky, starless night sky, a streak of red light filled his vision. That didn't seem to matter, though.
I wish I could have been a tailor.
Nick Wilde died right there on that dock.
July 8, 8:03 A.M
Precinct 1, ZPD Headquarters
"...Snarlof, Fangmeyer, Wolford, Grizzoli, got a multiple homicide on the Docks. Pier 81. I expect a preliminary report by lunch." As the four officers rose to leave, Chief Bogo plucked his reading glasses from his snout, tucking them into his breast pocket as he turned to leave. His hoof had just wrapped around the door knob when a voice spoke out.
"Uh, Chief? What about me?" The meaty bison glanced over his shoulder. He quickly found Judy Hopps, his most diminutive officer, standing in her chair, staring at him hopefully. Bogo smiled.
"Right. Hopps. You finally graduated from parking duty."
"Really?!" The bunny smiled sunnily, ears perked, arms clenched to her chest.
"Yup!" The Chief replied with false cheer. Then he dropped the smile, and all pretense of kindness. "Report to records. Paperwork is starting to pile up, they need the help," he stated flatly. He turned to leave again.
"Wait!" With a roll of his eyes, Bogo turned back Judy. He found her missing from the chair. Turning fully around, he found her standing before him. "Chief Bogo, Sir, please allow me to help on a real case! I've been doing- doing busywork for three months. Please, please let me do some actual police work," the bunny begged, eyes large and pleading.
Bogo snorted. He didn't get to where he was by being moved by some big doe eyes. Just as he opened his mouth to shoot her down, something sparked in his brain.
Nothing like a gruesome case too soon to get rid of a troublesome recruit. Or a rabbit that has no business being in my precinct.
"Fine," he said gruffly. Wouldn't do to let her catch on, after all. Better to let her think she had won. "Head to Pier 81. Assist in the homicide investigation. Don't let me hear you were a nuisance, or you'll be in records until Yule. Clear?"
"Clear! Sir, you won't regret this, I promise!" The rabbit turned and rushed off, leaving the Chief alone. He stared at the door she vanished through, an irritated frown dominating his face.
Somehow, I think I will regret this.
Lab techs walked amongst gore, feet clad in plastic booties to prevent contamination. The headless corpse of a gray wolf lay on its side, still clutching an automatic rifle. A boar lay in two pieces, cut through the waist. Chunks of a pronghorn lay scattered, his mostly intact head still wearing a shocked expression.
"...That's a severed head."
Wolford threw a paw over his mouth, turned and rushed to the side of the pier. As he messily lost his breakfast, the other four officers stared at the scene in various states of shock and surprise. A headless corpse was a rarity in Zootopia, and that was the least of the macabre scene before them.
"Well," Grizzoli gathered his wits first. "You lot remember what the Chief said. Preliminary by lunch. Let's get to work." The polar bear stepped forward, took out a notepad and began taking notes. Snarlof and Fangmeyer followed suit.
Violet eyes stared into the dark eyes of the pronghorn. Her body was frozen, her mind locked up, unable to process what she was seeing. Just when it seemed like she would pass out, a paw touched her shoulder.
Judy gasped and jerked, ears shooting to attention. She twisted to look at who touched her. Wolford was there, face concerned.
"Hey there, take it easy. Slow, deep breath through the mouth." He put his paw on his stomach and sucked in a lungful of air, chest puffing up. Then he slowly blew it out, relaxing visibly as he did so. "Then breathe it out. Repeat as necessary. Not so hard, yeah?"
Judy stared for a second, then tried to follow his example. Looking to the ground, she sucked in a shaky breath, then let it out. Not working to her satisfaction, she tried again, faster this time.
"Ah-ah! Slowly." Wolford held out a paw and lowered it in the take it easy gesture. Judy paused mid-breath. She glanced up at the wolf. He looked her in the eye and mouthed slowly. She tried again, taking her time as she did so. By the third attempt, she felt, well, not good, but better. Once she was sure she wasn't going to pass out, she offered her superior a slightly unsteady smile.
"Thank you, sir." Her voice was uncharacteristically subdued. The wolf waved her off, an understanding smile on his snout.
"Don't worry about it. First one is always the worst. And you saw me puke, right? I haven't got this all figured out, myself!" With one last smile, he turned to go to work. Judy stood alone and watched as he approached the headless wolf and began to sniff around, careful not to actually touch anything.
With one more slow breath, Judy stepped forward. Seeing how her fellow officers were already busy with documenting the corpses, she decided that she would talk with the techs. She looked around, and quickly spotted who she thought might be in charge. A pangolin in coveralls was standing by two crates. One crate was full of plastic evidence bags, sample kits and other forensic supplies, while the other was empty.
As she approached, the pangolin looked up from his clipboard. His eyebrows, such as they were, rose in surprise.
"Hey, I heard about you. The bunny cop. Uh, Jumps, right?" Judy smiled patiently.
"Hopps, actually. Officer Judy Hopps. Mr…?" She held out a paw. The pangolin, surprised by the gesture, careful wrapped his large claws around her much daintier digits.
"Stanley Rueber. Everyone calls me Rube." After a single firm pump, Judy withdrew her paw. She took out her notebook and her carrot pen.
"So, Rube, can you tell me what happened here?" The tech winced at the question.
"Uh, the thing is, no, I can't." The response visibly confused Judy.
"Why not? Is something unusual about the crime scene?" Brow furrowed, she shot the pangolin a curious look.
"Uh, unusual? Yeah, you could say that. Unusual in the fact that, in my fifteen years of forensic investigation, I have never seen wounds like this." Rube shot her a slightly flat look, like it should have been obvious that this crime scene was weird.
"How do you mean?" Judy ignored his sarcasm, jotting down a note on her pad.
"Well, it's like…" Rube struggled with the words, tapping his claws together nervously. After a moment, he gave up. "Here, I'll show you." With that, he approached the head of the pronghorn, the same one that had entranced Judy earlier. He looked up, only to find Judy hadn't moved from her spot. She had one paw over her mouth, eyes closed as she tried to master her nausea. He stared blankly, confused, before it finally clicked. He took the few steps back to her, looking slightly mortified. "Right. Your first time. A doozy of a first case, huh?" His voice was contrite, obviously embarrassed to have upset the officer that had only been polite to him so far.
Judy swallowed, then dropped her paw to offer the tech a wan smile.
"Yeah, a real doozy." Since she still sounded sick, Rube decided to forego the show-and-tell.
"Okay, how to explain. So… see how those two look like they were cut?" He pointed out the boar and the wolf in turn. Judy managed to follow where he was pointing without being sick, but she still looked back to Rube as quickly as she could.
"Yes, that is what it looks like," she agreed, mostly to cover how she had to swallow again.
"And the antelope looks like he was hit with a grenade?" The pangolin waved an arm, indicating the area the pronghorn's remains were spread over.
"Yes?" This time, Judy wasn't quite able to look at what he was trying to show her, keeping her gaze on the tech instead.
"It looks like two different methods, but they were actually killed by the same thing." If he noticed her hesitation, he graciously ignored it.
"So...the antelope was cut to pieces?" Judy guessed.
"Actually, the other two were exploded," was Rube's short reply.
"Really?" Judy hazarded another quick glance. "It doesn't look like it."
"Well, not from a distance. But the wounds are actually quite rough, lots of burned tissue. It's like they were wrapped in det cord." Rube scratched behind an ear, obvious vexed by the strange data.
"Det cord? Detonation cord? Like they use in demolition?" Judy turned back to the tech, eyes sharp. Det cord was highly regulated. If it was indeed the murder weapon, then it ought to be fairly easy to track recent purchases.
"Well, yes and no." Rube dropped his paw, then shrugged. "This stuff was several times weaker than any det cord I've seen. I would know, we often used it at the academy to create scenarios. All of the wounds look like it took several tries to get through. The boar, especially. But, they happened so rapidly that they were each done before they hit the ground. It looks like the antelope was wrapped in three different loops and detonated mid-air. Maybe he jumped, maybe he was thrown, I don't know. But what I do know is that it should be completely impossible to apply this stuff and detonate it, not once, but several times, all in the time it took this guy to hit the ground. Like I said, impossible. But, there it is. That's what the evidence says."
There was a moment of silence as Judy scribbled some notes, making sure to get every detail of Rube's explanation.
"Wounds made by impossible application of explosives. Got it. Anything else?" Finished with her notes, she looked up, eyes still intent.
"Well, yeah. We should be looking for two more corpses. See that arm over there?" Rube pointed and, against her better judgement, Judy turned to look. Indeed, there was an arm, severed at the shoulder. It was clothed in a black sleeve and the paw was clutched around the handle of a badly damaged briefcase. That was all the detail she could gather before she had to look away. "That arm doesn't belong to anyone here. Also, it seems to have been severed with a conventional blade. No weird not-det cord there. A wound that severe would kill most mammals without immediate medical attention. So, check the local morgues and hospitals for lions with missing limbs." There was another moment of silence as Judy flipped to a new page on her pad and began taking more notes.
"You said two corpses. More severed limbs?" Though she asked seriously, Rube still chuckled at the ridiculous question.
"Heh, nope. Chunks, this time. Bone fragments, muscle tissue, red fur, bits of lung, and a whole lotta buckshot. Someone was on the wrong end of a shotgun, a big one. A shotgun that isn't here, by the way. And it had to be wielded by a big mammal. A wolf, at the very least, probably something bigger."
The mention of a shotgun got Judy's attention. The rabbit glanced over at the wolf, and it finally registered that it was, in fact, a military grade rifle he was clutching. A glance over at the boar showed that indeed, a much bigger rifle was clutched in one outstretched hoof. She looked for the antelope's weapon, but didn't see anything obvious before she was forced to look away again. After another swallow and a slow breath, she looked back to Rube.
"The uh, the victim on the wrong end of the shotgun. You said red fur. Anything else?" she asked, trying to mask how unsettled she was.
Where could they have possibly gotten those? Projectile weapons are completely illegal!
"Oh, yeah. The fur is canid. Judging from the blood smear, he was small. Only four foot. The color of the fur and the size of the body means it's probably a red fox." Judy nodded, jotting down notes with her carrot pen.
"Okay. Anything else?" She looked to the pangolin expectantly.
"Um…" He scratched at his face, the claws producing a faint rasping sound as they passed over his dry skin. "Right. The dead fox had an accomplice. We found some fox tracks in the blood, but they were definitely made after the blood had settled for a few minutes." Judy dutifully jotted down the details. When she looked back up, Rube waved her off. "Sorry, that's all we know for sure. If you want to know more, you'll have to wait for the official report. With how complicated this all is, that's definitely going to take a couple days, maybe more."
Judy sighed, but brightened after she had a thought. She quickly turned to a new page in her pad, jotted something down, then ripped it out. Holding out the piece of paper, she waited for the pangolin tech to take it.
"This is my personal number. If you find anything else important, or just something you think I should know, please feel free to call me anytime." After the nonplussed pangolin took the slip, Judy favored him with a polite smile and turned to leave.
Grizzoli stood alone, though judging from the uniformed water buffalo walking away, he had just finished talking to the officers from the local precinct. Judy approached him and stood at attention. When it seemed he was too deep in thought to notice her, she cleared her throat.
"Mm, Officer Grizzoli. Sir?" When the polar bear looked down at her, Judy flipped open her notebook. "I talked to Rube, and he told me-"
"Did you take notes on everything?" Grizzoli cut her off, stopping her before she could get started.
"Um- oh, yes, sir." Judy stuttered, thrown off by the interruption.
"Then just put everything in your report. I'll read it later. Now that you know something, what do you think you should do? Something useful." His voice was gruff and annoyed, like he was talking to a particularly dim child.
"Er…" It took a moment for Judy answer, flustered by the polar bear's rudeness. "Um, it seems a lion lost an arm, but they're not here. I could check local morgues and hospitals for recent amputees." At first she didn't sound confident, but by the end she sounded more sure of herself.
"Nope. Local PD is already on that." Grizzoli shot her down, just as gruff and annoyed as before.
"Um…" Judy was stumped, as she was sure that had been the next step. Thinking hard, she tried to figure what she would have done after that. "I could follow the fox tracks?"
"Wolfords already on that. C'mon, Hopps, something useful!" Grizzoli was toeing the line between being stern and berating her.
"Uh-uh, I could…" Judy temporized, trying to think of the next step. "...I could talk to the locals! See if anyone saw something?" The last part was definitely a question, seeing how Grizzoli was still glaring down at her.
"My job. Hopps, you're not going to be any help here. Just head back to the-"
"Wait! I could- I could-" Now it was Judy's turn to interrupt the bear. Images of bright orange safety vests and a pathetic parking enforcement vehicle flashed behind her eyes, driving her to desperation. Wait. Parking enforcement. "I could check the traffic cameras! Maybe one recorded something!" Judy stared up at her superior, paws clasped together as she begged, ears laying flat on her back.
Grizzoli glared down at her, clearly offended that she had the audacity to talk over him. After a few uncomfortable moments, he finally budged. With a roll of his eyes and a shake of his head, he succumbed to Judy's plea.
"Fine. Check the cameras. Just get out of here!" He pointed down the pier to make his point. Judy nodded rapidly and took off, not wanting to upset him anymore.
The cameras didn't record anything.
Now, the day was over, and Judy sat alone in her apartment. She leant on her desk, face in her hands as she tried not to cry.
Bogo's going to assign me to records tomorrow. I'll be buried in paperwork until Yule. That's it. I'll end up spending my entire first year on the force with nothing to show for it but parking tickets and paperwork.
With a miserable sigh, she slouched back in her chair.
"I guess I really am just a token bunny." She paused, waiting for her nosy neighbors to chime in. For once, they were silent. She turned to the wall, ears perked in irritation, a little miffed that they hadn't taken the bait when she obviously needed the distraction. "Oh, come on! What, three months of bugging me and you choose now to-!"
Rrrr! Rrrr!
The sound of her phone buzzing instantly grabbed her attention, the bunny spinning back to snatch it off her desk. The number wasn't one she recognised, but she answered anyway.
"Hello, this is Judy Hopps speaking." Oh, Sweet Bunny Jesus, she hoped this wasn't someone selling car insurance.
"Yes, Officer Hopps? This is Rube. You remember when we spoke earlier today?" Judy blinked in surprise, a little shocked that her prayer had been answered. She had almost forgotten what that felt like. "You said to call you if we found something important, or if it was just something I thought you should know."
"Oh, yes! Of course." Judy reached out her free paw and snagged a pen from the cup, poising it over the notepad she kept on her desk.
"Well, this is definitely both of those. Remember that second missing corpse we talked about? The red fox on the wrong end of the shotgun. And then the accomplice fox, that walked away and left tracks."
"Of course." Judy nodded her head, even though the pangolin couldn't see.
"We finished the analysis on the blood, and the tracks. We also found a discarded shirt. One with a big hole blown in it. Once we added everything together, it pointed to something impossible."
"What? What is it?" Judy strained her hearing, desperate to get every detail.
"They're the same fox."
"...what?" Judy slumped in her chair, unable to believe what she had just heard.
"The red fox. He died on that pier, then walked away."